using foreach statement on a serializable dictionary

I have a serializable dictionary that I created for a WCF REST web service

[Serializable]
public class jsonDictionary<TKey, TValue> : ISerializable
{
    private Dictionary<TKey, TValue> _Dictionary;
    public jsonDictionary()
    {
        _Dictionary = new Dictionary<TKey, TValue>();
    }
    public jsonDictionary(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        _Dictionary = new Dictionary<TKey, TValue>();
    }
    public TValue this[TKey key]
    {
        get { return _Dictionary[key]; }
        set { _Dictionary[key] = value; }
    }
    public void Add(TKey key, TValue value)
    {
        _Dictionary.Add(key, value);
    }
    public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        foreach (TKey key in _Dictionary.Keys)
            info.AddValue(key.ToString(), _Dictionary[key]);
    }
}

I need to search through this dictionary to determine if 1 of several possible keys are present. I figured I would do this using a foreach statement kinda like so

foreach(var pair in dictionary)
{
    switch(pair.key)
    {
        case "something":

        Break;
        case "somethingelse":
        Break;
     }
}

However I keep getting the error:

    foreach statement cannot operate on variables of type 'ZTERest.jsonDictionary<string,string>' because 'ZTERest.jsonDictionary<string,string>' does not contain a public definition for 'GetEnumerator'

I know I have to do something with the IEnumerable or IEnumerator interface but I'm not sure how.

Answers

A dictionary provides a key/value lookup for a reason, it's not something that you usually iterate through. The generic Dictionary<> object that your class is wrapping already has a method called ContainsKey() that will do exactly what you're looking for, without the overhead of going through every single key/value pair to see if it's there. There's no need to expose an iterator, just add this to your class.

public bool ContainsKey(TKey key)
{
    return _Dictionary.ContainsKey(key);
}

And call it like this.

if (dictionary.ContainsKey("Something"))
{
    //do something
}

Your class needs to implement IEnumerable to perform foreach on the Key of the dictionary, hence your class would look as below

public class jsonDictionary<TKey, TValue> : ISerializable, IEnumerable<TKey>

Then you need to implement the following methods from the IEnumerable interface as shown:

public IEnumerator<TKey> GetEnumerator()
{
    // Since we want to iterate on the Key we specifiying the enumerator on keys
    return _Dictionary.Keys.GetEnumerator();
}

IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
{
    return GetEnumerator();
}

Then when you perform a foreach the keys from dictionary are fetched hence you can have your foreach as shown:

foreach(var key in dictionary)
{
    switch(key)
    {
         case "Something":
             // do something
             break;
         case "SomethingElse":
             //do something
             break;
    }
}

In case you actually need to iterate through the dictionary (instead of just checking if a certain key exists) the Dictionary.Keys property returns an enumerable collection which you could use iterate through the dictionary:

foreach(var key in dictionary.Keys)
{
    if(dictionary[key] == "something")
    {
        // Do something
    }
}

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